This unfortunate renovation project was performed on a house that sold for $1.4 million back in 2004 or 5. The builder/buyer spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a new septic system and then turned his attention to the house itself. He did an okay job but was hampered by the fact that, despite all his effort, he couldn’t build more than a 3 bedroom septic system and, because the house sits on an acre of land in a two-acre zone, he ran into the Bloomer rule and was forbidden to build a real garage – he ended up with a carport sided with open lattice work. He then compounded his error of buying the place to begin with by pricing his creation at $3.625,000, and it sat.

He eventually lost the project to his lender and now Webster Bank (if there is still a Webster Bank – these days, who knows?) is trying to sell it. They priced it at $1,767,500, perhaps the amount of their loan, in February and today reduced it to $1.699 million. I won’t promise that that’s the winning number but we’re getting awfully close to the price of the land here and the million dollars (or whatever the builder put in) is yours for free. That’s approaching a good deal.

You can’t build a fourth bedroom legally, pfar, but there’s a very nice room, with closet, that only needs a door to become a bedroom. As a licensed realtor I of course would never advise you to break the law but if you were to arrange such a modest renovation, sans permit, I’m not sure who would know. Remember though, at resale time, you can’t list it as a 4 bedroom house when only three are legit. $1.2 would be a good starting bid, in my opinion, and maybe the terminal bid, too.